Divorced women 'more likely to suffer heart disease'

Any woman who has been through the stress of a divorce will be in no doubt of the heartache it can cause.

But now researchers have discovered that going through a marriage break-up can literally lead to a broken heart.

They say women who divorce are 60 per cent more likely to develop heart disease in later life than those who remain in a married relationship.

Even those who find new happiness and remarry are still likely to suffer ill health as a consequence of their previous failed partnership, the experts said.

Men, in contrast appear to be physically unaffected by divorce, with marital loss having a negligible effect on their chances of developing heart problems.

Researchers believe that the emotional stress of a marriage breakdown, coupled with the subsequent social and economic changes, such as moving home and a reduction in income, trigger physical and mental problems in women.

These, they say, can put them at higher risk of suffering cardiovascular disease.

Women are also more content in themselves if in a family environment, whereas job and career prospects are more important to a man's self satisfaction, the researchers said.

'Our results reveal that women with a marital loss have a higher risk of disease in late-midlife compared to continuously married women, whereas marital loss is not associated with men's risk,' a spokesman for the University of Texas, who carried out the research, said.

'Women tend to value themselves more in terms of family relationships...whereas men value themselves primarily in terms of their occupation.'

Academics interviewed around 10,000 middle-aged men and women every two years for a decade as part of a wider health and lifestyle survey.

They discovered that over the 10-year period more than a 10th of respondents - 1,030 people - developed cardiovascular disease.

The findings, published in the Journal of Marriage and the Family, showed that 11.6 per cent of divorced women and 10.7 per cent of remarried women had heart disease, compared to 8.7 per cent of continuously married women.

Risk of developing cardiovascular problems also increased with age.

At 51, 10.9 per cent of divorcees and 9.8 per cent of remarried women had heart disease, compared to 7.3 per cent of women who remained married.

Nine years later, by the age of 60, 33 per cent of divorced women and 31 per cent of remarried women had cardiovascular problems, compared to just 22 per cent of those who were married and had not suffered a break-up.

Divorce rates have quadrupled in Britain since 1970 with around one in four marriages now breaking down.

About half of marriages of twenty-somethings end in divorce with the highest rate being among 25 to 39-year-olds, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Earlier this week Beverly Charman won Britain's biggest contested divorce settlement after a judge ordered her insurance broker husband to pay her £48million following their separation.

The study will come as a further blow to thousands of women, such as Heather Mills, currently going through stressful separations form their partners.

Earlier this week Miss Mills revealed she had felt 'abandoned' following the breakdown of her relationship with ex-Beatle Sir Paul McCartney. She said: 'It's like a physical pain. It just goes on and on.'